24 Hours: An intense, suspenseful psychological thriller (18 page)

I
had fallen
into a sleep so deep that when I woke I couldn’t think who this figure lying beside me was. I could hear only the beating of the rain against the window and then, somewhere further away, some kind of thunder.

Only it wasn’t thunder. It was someone knocking frantically on the door, pounding.

‘Oh God.’ Sid woke suddenly, sat bolt upright in the bed with a sharp, panicked inhalation of air. The usual for him: night terrors.

‘It’s okay,’ I said automatically – only clearly it wasn’t.

I got out of bed, thinking,
Polly, something’s happened to Polly
. Pulling on my discarded jeans and jumper, I practically fell down the stairs, tore the door open—

Mal stood there, face white, hair on end, soaked from the rain that was hammering down.

‘What the fuck’s she been saying now?’

‘Who?’ I kept thinking about Polly.

‘My nutty ex.’

‘Your wife?’

He went to step inside the house. I thought of Sid upstairs, glanced nervously over my shoulder.

‘Mal. This is a really bad time.’

‘I’ll say. I’m having a really bad time.’ He looked so plaintive, so lost and bedraggled, my heart almost went out to him – and then I remembered Suzanne’s words. ‘Laurie, I don’t know what she’s been saying, but please, you must—’

‘You were in Vejer,’ I said, stepping onto the porch. The ground was cold beneath my bare feet as I pulled the door behind me a little so he couldn’t see into the house.

‘Yes,’ Mal admitted. He looked abashed.

‘You followed me there.’

‘No,’ he shook his head vehemently. ‘I really, really didn’t. Suzanne booked it. Honestly. She booked the whole thing. She always chose our holidays. She begged me to come.’

‘Really,’ I said dryly. I was losing my patience with both of them; I had problems enough of my own. From upstairs, I heard the bang of the bathroom door.

‘Yes really, Laurie,’ he tried to take my hands. ‘Please. You must believe me.’

‘So why didn’t you tell me you were out there?’ I stepped back, cracking my head against the door, wincing at the impact.

‘Are you all right?’ he looked worried. His false concern turned my stomach. I just wanted him to go.

‘I’m not doing this now, Mal.’

‘But—’

I could sense Sid upstairs, moving around. In seconds he would appear and everything would become even more complicated.

‘I need some time to digest everything I’ve heard.’ Swiftly I turned and moved back inside the house. ‘Please. Just leave me alone.’

And I shut the door in Mal’s face. Which normally would be against my nature, but today felt very much safer.

I stood, thinking for a moment. In the hall mirror, my hair was tangled, eye make-up smudged beneath tired eyes. Lesser than my normal self, somehow. Then I picked up the phone on the table, called my mother and asked her to keep Polly overnight. She wanted to chat but I cut her short with some excuse about not feeling well.

I hung up. I could smell cigarettes; a smell the house had been free of for a while.

One foot on the bottom stairs, I paused for a moment. Then I ran up, following the smoke.

Sid was in our daughter’s room, lying on the small white bed, staring at the portrait of her he’d painted when she was tiny. A wee scrap, she’d been, tucked into my chest, a warm puppyish bundle. Part of me. Part of him; of us.

I stood above him, looking down.

This time it was me that held out my hand. I knew it was wrong. I knew it couldn’t go right.

But right now, I just wanted to hide in my own past. In something utterly visceral; something with no thought involved.

Sid tried to pull me down to him.

The burn of his fingers wrapped too tightly round my wrist.

Slowly I pulled my hand back.

‘Not in here.’

Not surrounded by the childish innocence of Polly’s room, all pink and white and gingham-curtained.

We were already too tarnished for that.

I
f you’d have asked
me once, a long time ago, I’d have said it was Emily who was addicted to drama, not me. It was Emily who made the life-altering decisions in a second. It was she who had the big love affairs; the gut-wrenching, heart-rending break-ups, the dashes across country or even continent, and – on one spectacular occasion – across half the world, following an ex to Sydney, only to tire of him precisely one week later. She promptly decamped to an eco site on the Gold Coast in order to help save the planet, which largely involved shacking up with a monosyllabic but very blond surfer for three months, doing little but saving sea turtles and shagging.

‘He was thick as shit,’ she said cheerfully, arriving back at Heathrow on a freezing February day with a suitcase full of flip-flops, sarongs and Tim Tams, and a tan that made her look almost bronze, ‘but the sex was fucking amazing. Until he decided he loved me. Then it got dull. Kept trying to gaze into my eyes, which is useless when you want a good licking.’

‘Emily!’ I nearly drove into the car in front. She made me laugh so much; she was incorrigible.

But no one did ask, and by then I’d met Sid. Slowly, my life caught up with hers in terms of drama. Less flamboyant, perhaps, but every bit as dramatic – only not in a good way.

Emily and Sid never liked each other. My other friends were drawn by his dark good looks, his enigmatic silences, his untapped talent. Occasional bursts of real charm. His what one university friend called ‘Mr Rochester presence’.

Emily just snorted when she heard this last. ‘Presence? Arrogance, more like.’

Emily knew me well enough to know I was harbouring a desire to heal Sid, although neither of us could have described it with such clarity back then in our twenties.

‘You need to think about yourself
before
you think about him,’ she said, about a month after he’d appeared again and we’d started dating properly. ‘Not always after.’

‘I do,’ I protested.

‘No, you don’t. You can’t both be obsessing about him.’

Slowly, my other friends fell by the wayside. Sid would insult them, admittedly unintentionally – usually, at least – but the damage would be done; they’d stop thinking he was mysterious and just think him rude. After the wedding, he rang John Lewis without me knowing and sent all the presents back. We would, apparently, make our own way in the world.

When he realised how mortified I was, he was truly sorry. He wrote to each guest individually on hand-decorated paper, and apologised. It was that kind of gesture that made me forgive him time and again. I saw his behaviour for what it was, a kind of misguided pride, a false belief that wedding gifts were some kind of charity. I understood that Sid felt he’d accepted enough charity in his youth to last him a lifetime; he wanted to be in absolute control now.

But after the wedding, the one person he did not apologise to was Emily, even after he sent the beautiful fish-tank she’d bought back to her. I knew it was because deep down he felt threatened by my love for her, by our bond – and there was little I could do about it. And so gradually, over time and despite her best efforts to like him for my sake, she began to despise him. She thought he was pathetic for being so jealous, and I realised it every time the three of us met.

A small, disloyal part of me wondered if Emily was jealous too – after all, she was the one who generally did boyfriends, whilst I’d always been profoundly single. I’d had the odd fling here and there, but nothing ever amounted to much; they’d be wildly unsuitable, or worse, horribly dull, and it would generally end quite swiftly. Emily was used to having my attention; she certainly wasn’t used to me being part of a couple. But I dismissed this when she started suggesting double dates.

We had some uncomfortable and frankly ridiculous evenings out as a foursome, until I came to understand these occasions were more punishment than pleasure. Sid and Emily would glower and snipe at each other whilst Emily’s date and I attempted polite and hopeless conversation. Eventually we gave up.

And Emily gave up too, trying to dissuade me from Sid. She saw that I was gone, hook, line and proverbial sinker. She didn’t exactly give me her blessing, but she accepted it and I was relieved. I pushed aside any thoughts I had of her reservations about Sid.

But still, nothing quite prepared me for what came next.

T
he day
after Suzanne’s revelation, I slipped out before Sid woke and went to work early. I looked at his dark head on the pillow and I felt bereft; almost as if it was the last time I’d ever see him. I knew he wouldn’t be there when I got home. In truth, I didn’t really want him to be; I knew I was poised for disaster. At the same time, I couldn’t bear putting the key in the door and hearing the silence behind it.

I collected Polly from school and went home via the high street bakery, buying sticky doughnuts and Belgian buns dripping with icing so white it was luminous. I had a feeling the blues were about to immerse me.

As I pulled up outside the house, Emily was there already, sitting on the front step.

‘Nice surprise,’ I waved, opening the car door for Polly who bounded out into Emily’s embrace.

‘I made soup at Gran’s,’ Polly was gabbling excitedly. ‘It was green and it went everywhere ’cos she forgot the lid of the magic-thingy. She said we were parkners in crime.’

‘Partners,’ Emily corrected absently. ‘Lovely.’

‘You’re just in time for tea,’ I held up the bag of goodies. ‘A lifetime on the hips, etcetera.’

I caught Emily’s eye above Polly’s head, but she didn’t return my smile.

In the kitchen I divided the cakes into three, viscous jam oozing like blood onto the white china. As I put the kettle on, Emily clomped down the stairs in her cowboy boots.

‘So. To what do I owe this treat?’ I focussed on the buns now. ‘Bad day?’

‘No,’ she scowled at me. ‘Why?’

I stopped cutting. ‘What’s up?’

‘What’s that on your neck?’ she glared at me.

‘Nothing,’ I shook my hair over a faint bite-mark Sid had left.

‘
Really
, Laurie?’ Emily snatched the knife from me, and pulled my sleeve up, sending me off balance. ‘Oh, I bloody knew it.’

Four fingerprints bloomed on my upper arm.

I stared at her and then I wrenched my arm out of her grasp, pulling my sleeve back down.

‘For fuck’s sake, Laurie.’ She jabbed the knife into the table. ‘One night, and it’s already happening.’

Polly launched herself into the kitchen. I sat down rather shakily at the table and rearranged the cake that had slipped off.

‘How’s the trampolining going, Pol?’ Emily unlocked the patio doors. ‘Been working on your backflip?’

‘Extremely much, actually,’ Polly was grave.

‘Why don’t you show me?’

‘But I want my doughnut,’ Polly’s bottom lip was already trembling slightly at the horrible thought she might be denied the treat.

‘Great gymnasts train first, eat later,’ Emily gently but firmly propelled her out of the door. ‘How do you think Usain Bolt got so fast, or Beth Tweddle spins so high? First backflip,
then
treats.’

Polly realised she wasn’t going to win and gave in, running through the damp garden towards the trampoline at the back. Hands on hips, Emily turned back to me.

‘Don’t start on me, Em.’ I stood to make the tea. ‘I’m a big girl now.’

‘Laurie, it took you eight years to come to your senses and in one bloody night you’ve lost it again.’

‘I haven’t bloody lost it.’ The emotion of the last few days was building up inside, threatening to overwhelm me. ‘It’s none of your business anyway.’

‘Oh, really?’ Emily’s voice was at a dangerous pitch that I recognised as suppressed rage. ‘So whose business is it when you call me in the middle of the night, howling?’

‘
Once
, I did that, Emily. Once.’

‘Whose business is it when I have to take Polly to school for a week because you’re too ashamed to show your damaged face in the playground?’

‘Ouch.’ Boiling water splashed my hand. ‘And that was only once too.’

‘One whole week.’

‘Well, if you’re counting the bloody days—’

‘Don’t be so fucking stupid. No one’s counting anything, Laurie, except …’

‘Except what?’ I met her tawny gaze. She was so cross, her round face was rigid. I’d rarely seen her like this and it unnerved me.

‘I’m just counting on still having you as a friend.’

‘What does that mean?’ I picked up the cake too quickly and the pieces all slid off, tumbling over the flagstone tiles. ‘Shit.’ I caught Emily’s eye, desperate to dissipate the tension. ‘Still, no point crying over spilt cake I guess.’

She looked away.

No one was laughing now.

‘It means that I am absolutely and categorically not going to sit around and watch whilst you go back to Sid and he ruins your life.
A-gain.
’

She did love to italicise her words for effect, my dear Emily.

‘I’m not going back to him. We just had sex. That’s all. Just sex.’

‘Just sex?’ Her voice was flat. ‘And you’re already bruised.’

‘I’m not bruised, Emily. Not really.’ I knew what she was getting at; I knew why she was cross – but the intensity of her anger was confusing me. ‘Look, I can see what you think. But it’s not like that. I’m not going back to him. I didn’t plan it. I was having a really, really bad day …’ I realised I hadn’t even told her about Mal, about Suzanne’s second round of accusations.

‘So you thought you’d make it a hundred times worse.’ Emily walked away, stood with her back to me, looking down the garden to where Polly bounced and repeatedly failed to execute the requisite backflip, mastering a belly-flop instead. ‘Put your tongue in, Pol,’ Emily called out of the door. ‘Or you’ll bite it off.’

‘I’m not infallible, Emily. I am doing the absolute best I can but sometimes, yes, sometimes,’ I felt tears scalding my eyes now. ‘Sometimes, or quite often even, I admit, I fuck up.’

‘But there’s fucking up, and there’s fucking someone who has tried to destroy you.’ She wasn’t going to give in. ‘And
don’t
bloody cry.’